Local gunsmith Edward Woodward turned his talents to the relic business not long after the battle, selling relics picked up here to veterans and visitors as early as 1865, and is particularly known for his engraved artillery rounds and his desk sets. This one uses a rectangular wood base, decorative contoured and cross-hatched on the front edge and mounted with one of Woodward’s trademark eagles perched upon a piece of wood certainly cut from a tree here on the battlefield and giving a very nice impression of the eagle perched on a mountain peak, flanked by a shell fragment on one side and a canister shot on the other that is engraved in script, “Gettysburg /1863.” Along the front edge he mounted three Minie balls recovered on the field, two mounted point up and the center, for variety and to show the hollow base, mounted point down. These are flanked by a US general service eagle button on one side and a Confederate “block-I” enlisted infantry button on the other. Both have nice early excavated or battlefield pick-up patinas, though both are affixed by the simple expedient of a tack.

As a whole, this is an interesting piece of folk art as well as a Gettysburg relic, one that adheres to Victorian notions of combining the historic and aesethetic.

We note also two small, tombstone-shaped pieces of marble at the base of the eagle’s perch, something rather evocative given the battlefield origin of the relics, and perhaps more meaningful to a veteran who survived, but lost comrades in the fighting, than to the average visitor.

This is in very good condition, with minor rubs and losses as shown.  [sr][ph:L]

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